The Disappointed House
by Emily-in-the-glass
Summary: A PEI summer that changes the life of Emily Starr's youngest daughter, Starr Kent, as she is on the verge of growing up.
1. Introduces Starr

A/N : It's me, "Miri" as some of you know me from your reviews. This is my first fanfic: please read, enjoy, and review. =)  
  
Starr Kent raced to her gate to keep a tryst in the gathering darkness. Her gate, sunken in a little marshy hollow, a stone's throw away from the Disappointed House. The silver chorus of the frogs were beginning to sound as she gained her post, and from faraway, the tolling of the White Cross bell floated athwart, faint, fairy-like. Starr leaned on her swinging gate and felt it creak open into nowhere-in-particular. She was a-thrill with the promise of her reasonless gate.  
  
"A gate is always a mystery --it lures--it is a symbol." She quoted to herself. "And a gate removed from prosaic necessities — one wonders what lies beyond."  
  
It was June, and the Kents were all together at their Island summer home, The Disappointed House: Teddy, Emily, Ilse Juliet, and Starr. But not for long – somehow Starr's family had never spent a whole vacation together at the Disappointed House. Her father always had art exhibitions to hold in Toronto, or New York, or Chicago, or in Europe. This year, he was taking Starr's older sister, Ilse Juliet, and her best friend Emily Beatrice Miller to Munich in July and August. Mother and Starr had declined to go.  
  
Mother loved the Island with passionately; Starr knew that whenever she could avoid a speaking tour or book-signing she liked best to spend her summers writing stories and letters under Mona Lisa's smile in the dim grey parlour. Starr loved the Island just as deeply – nothing delighted her more than prowling about the thousand Blair Water haunts of her mother's girlhood. "Emily's Bower" at the timeless New Moon garden – the three intriguing roads, "The Yesterday Road," "The Today Road," and "The Tomorrow Road" in Lofty John's Bush (really Mother's bush), and rugged, abandoned, romantic little Tansy Patch.  
  
Starr was her mother's daughter in sensibility, but physically they little resembled one another. Like Emily, Starr was black haired and dark eyed – but while Emily was tall and aloof, Starr looked diminutive, fragile, elfin. She was far prettier than Emily had ever been, for she was crimson of lip and her cheeks were always russet-stained. Starr's pointed ears were really her sole inheritance from Emily – she did not know it, but all else she inherited from her beautiful, unhappy grandmother Aileen Kent whose name was seldom crossed the Kent family's lips.  
  
"Why do we call our cottage 'The Disappointed House'?" Star had asked Emily and Teddy on the drive there. "A house as loved as ours has no right to be disappointed." But she had second thoughts the moment she said it – she loved it and Mother loved it – but what about father, who never stayed there long?  
  
Mother told Starr the romantic little tale of Fred Clifford building the house for a bride who jilted him "at the altar." Starr found it delicious.  
  
"But who finished it, Mummy? How did it come to be ours?"  
  
Father's face turned a little white. "It was a wedding present for Emily and I." he said stiffly.  
  
"Mr. Priest gave it to us." Emily said, quietly. "We furnished it together, once, before it was disappointed a second time. But Teddy and I furnished it in our imagination, long ago." She added with a laugh.  
  
"How was it disappointed a second time?" Starr persisted.  
  
Emily was silent for a space. She stroked Starr's hair, but her eyes were fixed on Father's hardened features. Then suddenly, when Father's attention was fixed on a sharp turn, she pulled Starr close and whispered quickly in her ear.  
  
"Ask Mr. Priest."  
  
Emily was pensive for a while. Three turns later, when they neared their own gate, she whispered to Starr again.  
  
"But not if it hurts him." 


	2. A Dream in the Twilight

**A/N: I'm sorry for the lack of updates... I almost forgot I had a story here! Thank you to everyone who reviewed, for reminding me. I've been rereading Emily, Jane Eyre, Jacob Have I Loved, and pondering on the plot. Can you guess what might happen? Read, review and enjoy.**

Night fell in cloths of purple -- each falling drapery a deeper shade than the last. Its beauty caressed Starr like a garment. She yearned for another presence to share its ethereal charm with her; and so she sensed him before he stirred, heard him before he spoke.

"An evening sky of violet damask, like a royal robe for my Star." Starr shivered with delight to hear him utter. His tone was velvet on her skin.

It was on her tongue to whisper in reply, "Am I your Star?" but the words caught on her teeth. In all of Starr Kent's fourteen years, she had addressed Mr. Priest with no more than the polite modes of greeting, _Hi how do you do? Would you like more tea?_ or the censured prose of _Yes_ and _No_ answers. She had shrank from him as a child for she harboured an innate terror of his malignant green eyes, his mocking mouth, and his "jarback"; yet more and more in her fourteenth spring she felt an unwarranted, magnetic attraction to his beautiful phrasings. So much did his words show to her a spectral realm that she saw beauty in his lack thereof.

Of course, they never conversed. Her fascination with him was borne from fragments of his spiels with Mother, echoes that came to her as she pretended to read Alhambra on the striped silk sofa, or Enone in the pines. She was a shy, tongue-tied child to him, a baby. She faded into the shadowy background before her brilliant, witty mother.

Her bitter pensees pierced the spell of the dusk. Her "Hello Mr. Priest" was clammy in her throat and she sullenly anticipated his next question:

"Is your mother in, is your father out?"

Starr came here to dream at gate every evening when she overheard Mr. Priest voice his love for its allure. He paid his favourite haunt a visit, too, before he called on the habitants of the house. Starr came here to catch his musings to himself. He spoke to her as a messenger, a gatekeeper. But his words were brief. Recluse Dean Priest was awkward around shy children who were frightened by his awkwardness.

It was a less prosy variation on this occassion:

"Where is my Star tonight? Oh, daughter of Star, will my Star want to see me tonight?"

_His_ voice speaking _her_ name when she knew he did not mean her was a dart of pain to her heart. A wave of fire blew swiftly over her. There was a scorching of violet eyes on green.

"Mr. Priest, don't you know that I am a 'Starr', too?"


	3. Wordless

Mother's Wind Woman shivered like a lost phantom in the trees. A chill raced up Starr's spine.

He had turned and walked away.

A solitary silhouette limping into the shadows.

- - -

The scene kept replyaing inStarr's mind as she laced through the Today Road the next afternoon, like an unquiet vagabond. A crackle resounded, steps away.

A figure advancing in the dappled light.

She stood as if paralyzed by a dream. Was he coming/ Really coming... back to her?

A thousand rainbowed visions lighted Starr's eyes.

- - -

But she ducked quickly into the green bush as the footfalls deepened.

"Is that you, Starr? Came a boy's voice.

Starr peered out from her unconvincing cover of maple leaves and lupines. A winding branch framed her white face, blossoming red with a blush.

"B-Burnley?" she gasped in a barely audible tone.

Burnley Miller of the laughing blue eyes anad tousled brown hair, gazing intently at her as he stood with a perky black dog at his side, belonged to Aunt Ilse and Uncle Perry. He was three months Starr's junior and much petted by Ilse Juliet and Emily Beatrice, for he was the youngest and the sole male party. He was so friendly and winsome that Starr couldn't help feeling shadowed in his presence. Starr hated the feeling; it made her shyer and more tongue-tied than she already was.

"What are you doing here?" she essayed to make conversation, again.

The "baby" of the gang continued staring at Starr. _Why must he stare so? _

Like her mother, Starr was prettiest in a crimson flush. She did not know how the green branches accentuated her colour and how they hid her lank, undeveloped figure. Burnley was surprised by the beauty of the shy, elfin face he rarely jetted a second glance at. He grinned the adorable Burnley grin.

"I came to scare you, of course." He teased. "Silly girl! What're you hiding from."

Starr hopped out.

"Nothing," she stammered. She didn't know what to say. Did he, of all people, have to catch her?

"Really nothing...?" Burnley asked keenly. "... that I can help with?"

"No." Starr was sullen.

Burnley looked grave, then smiled again. "Where's your book today, Starr? You're always reading."

"I... don't know." Starr had plenty of brilliant conversations in dreams and in writing, but never at a given moment.

"I've been reading..." he announced.

"What..?" Starr made her lips part to ask eagerly. She shouldn't have interrupted.

"...One of your mother's stories." Starr might have known. "about little orphaned Portia who hides from the world in her garret and writes letter to her family, who'll never get them. You remind me of Portia, Starr... dreamy and aloof..."

They were walking as he chattered, and had reached the junction to the yesterday road. Starr knew the story he was talking about.


	4. By the Banks of Blair Water

And Starr was furious. She loved her mother's Portia- the little girl who hid away from her boisterous family to write letters to do a dead friend in the attic. That Burnley knew all about Portia, and how much she identified with Portia, made her feel incredibly naked.

"What were you reading that for?" she sneered. "It's a girl's book."

"I like it, all the same." Burnley shrugged in that candid way of his. "Portia is cute." he added, with a sidelong glance at Starr.

"My, the Blair Water boys would beat you up to a hash potato if they found out." Starr jeered, recklessly inelegant. Ilse Juliet and Emily were always teasing her, and she wanted to have the power to make someone squirm, too. She wanted Burnley to go away and leave her alone.

"I can slay them with my sword!" Burnley giggled shrilly, like a little girl. He picked up a twig and thrust it forward with expert motion, as if wielding a weapon. "I'm a knight left over from the olden days of chivalry. I can rescue you from your forlorn tower and bring you through perilous forests back to civilization." 

Starr knew all about the days of chivalry. She loved "The Lady of the Lake", and she had learned Tennyson's "Idylls of the Kings" since she overheard Mother and Mr. Priest quoting its passages dreamily. The part of the Today Road that they were walking along was particularly dark and shadowy, and appealed strongly to Starr's imagination as a medieval forest. But it stung to have Burnley so well attuned to her soul - her forte and sanctuary. His knowledge and passion was thoroughly alarming and intrusive.

"I have no idea what you're talking about." she said freezingly. "Burnley Miller, you are the strangest boy I know - I mean, that I've met." she corrected. She didn't want to be associated with him and his oddness at all.

Burnley stared at her a little, letting the words "What do you mean?" fade from his lips. Starr, head bent with burnished cheeks, hoped savagely that he felt crushed. Arrogant young thing! She didn't look up to check, though; she didn't dare meet his eys. 

They had now reached the New Moon burial ground and he perched himself easily on great great grandmother Murray's here-I-stay. "I'm going to draw." he announced.

Starr didn't deign to answer, but went to wade along the thrush-lined banks of the Blair Water, ostensibly writing poetry. Burnley Miller wasn't going to outdo her in talent!

On the far shore of the blue strand she finally lay down to rest, spreading her bare arms and feet in a bed of daisies. She watched the blue waters glisten by, and let large tears roll down her cheeks.

Burnley found her again an hour later, crying softly to herself there.

"I drew a picture of you, singing on the riverbank." he offered.

Starr's brown paws barely touched the sheet of paper before she tore it in two and threw it in the wind.

"You don't like it?" Burnley asked surprised, but still maddeningly without anger. He plucked a handful of daisies. "Have some flowers instead." he suggested.

"I don't want them!" Starr screamed. "Leave me alone!"

"Okay. I'll go now. I'll leave them here for you."

"I said, I don't want them!"

She got up deliberately and crushed the daisies with her heel.  



	5. A Drive

"The days at the Disappointed House have a rhythm and cadence to them." Emily Kent said to Dean Priest. "Long, low, lazy, gentle." 

"Summer days - like the song of a thrush, or locusts buzzing ceaselessly in the hay." Mr. Priest agreed, reclining in that odd posture of his in the Disappointed House garden. The years had left him more twisted from his "jarback", and his troubled eyes were very deep-set in a gray, finely-creasing face. But something about the fragility of his appearance struck a chord in Starr's heart.

"I spend dawn and dusk writing by the dormer window - the look-out over the front door. There I can keep my eye on my brood as they travel forth into the world in the mornings, and return home at the day's close, with her gains and gifts in their arms."

"Star - I wish I had your children to love. It is not to be my fate." His sudden piercing jealousy, apt to resurface, charged the air with bitterness.

"Oh, you could, you could love me!" Starr uttered with clenched fists behind the rose-bush.

"What are you doing, Starr?" Emily Beatrice asked wonderingly. She had her arm linked around Ilse Juliet. They were both fourteen years old and very wonderfully tall, beautiful girls. Beatrice was the more striking of the two, with midnight black hair and bold blue eyes, but Juliet had curling blonde hair, rose-leaf cheeks and delicately chiselled features that made her an acclaimed belle in Montreal. Few guessed that Juliet's curls thatched an alarmingly clever brain, and that behind her demure eyes were deep, serious thoughts. It fell to laughing Beatrice to play the careless flirt. At any rate, they were both extremely worldly and nearly bored to death in poky old Blair Water. They were elated to be departing for Europe next week, and had even spent the past week planning a 'clam bake' as their send-off party.

"She's forever talking to herself." Ilse Juliet said laughingly. Her voice was always filled with a silvery trill of laughter.

"Just like my baby brother Burnley." Emily Beatrice giggled. "I do declare he's the strangest boy ever born. I told him a joke a week ago, and he started laughing out loud after supper last night, because he happened to think of it and finally 'got it.' A whole week later!"

Starr stored the anecdote away in her mind for internal reference. Nothing had changed her attitude towards Burnley since their encounter several weeks ago. She wanted to believe he was insipidly stupid, and more than ever she detested the thought of resembling him. What if everybody else thought so too? What if they thought she was just as half-witted, as idiotic?

"I think Burnley is a laughing oaf." she declared loudly.

Emily Beatrice laughed again and hugged her tight. "You're adorable, and so is my little brotherwums."

Which didn't make Starr any happier. She squirmed away.

They were all to drive to Priest Pond for the clam bake, which was to be held at Malvern Bay: everyone, except Uncle Perry who had a court case that evening. Father took Aunt Ilse and the other children in his Ford. Mr. Priest got out a borrowed ancient buggy, which Mother was delighted to ride in. Starr begged to join the carriage - firstly because she wanted to avoid Burnley, and secondly because she could observe him driving from Mother's lap, leaving mother to do all the talking.

But at the last minute Great-Uncle William called and mother had to do the Murray honours and serve him tea. One couldn't bring, stately, pompous old Uncle William to a clam-bake!

"So it's you and I, Star - little Starr." Mr. Priest addressed awkwardly when he found her waiting at the gate.

Starr blushed and said nothing. She hoped he wouldn't think her a very stupid girl. Little did he know she held the most interesting dialogues in her head when no-one was around! She took his offered hand and climbed onto the right seat. Then she sat primly and smoothed her purple-daisied dress. She remembered to cross her ankles. But she could still think of nothing to say.

The wind blew her hair, which she had taken such pains to curl the night before. She had stolen into Ilse Juliet's room and borrowed her curl-papers, knowing who would be at the clam-bake! She glanced sideways at Mr. Priest and wondered if he noticed.

He seemed to be merely observing the scenery. The route to Priest Pond was still one of the loveliest on the island. Long, green hills veined by the red ribbons of roads. The three ponds - Blair Water, Derry Pond and Priest Pond clung together like blue gems on a beauty's breast. Starr hoped wildly that he was so absorbed in beauty, that he forgot her presence.

"Do you think me handsome?" he asked, smiling at her.

It startled Starr, who had been staring at him for a long time.

"No - no," she protested confusedly. "No, I mean yes." she stammered politely.

Mr. Priest looked pensively at her for a long time. Starr found her heart beating wildly. Was he pleased that she found him handsome, or did those canny green eyes guess her secret?

He laughed cynically. Starr thought she must die - he knew she loved him and was laughing at her. His wisdom mocked the mere thought of a stupid girl like her, pining away for him.

"It's a nice day, isn't it?" she faltered politely. It was hopelessly stupid, but she couldn't think of anything else to say without betraying even more of her idiocy.

"What a stale subject the weather is!" Dean Priest exploded. "If two people do not like each other, there's no use in pretending to talk. Hang conventions!"

Starr didn't know what he meant, but it was clear that he didn't want her to talk to him. How can we expect an eleven-year-old lass to guess that Dean Priest was secretly as shy around her as she was around him? He thought she was hating him beneath her black brows - that she judged him for his crooked back and lame gait and odd, bookish ways. He was very old now, and very tired of being misunderstood.

So Starr fixed her gaze on the horizon where the waters emptied out onto a glimpse of the ocean. Here she was, bodily close to he whom she would give her soul for, and he... despised her, and thought her insipidly stupid. (_She stifled a sniffle.)_ She knew those eyes read her very soul and laughed at her for loving him. _(Another sniffle.)_ She was at his mercy, and he had the power to crush her girlish dreams to dust. _(This time she choked.)_ Her heart crumpled in his large, firm, capable and creased palms. _(Now the tears ran like a fountain.)_

"By Jove! She's a waterfall - Mrs. Gummidge!" Starr knew who that was, but didn't care. "And they say like mother like daughter! " he said in even bitterer exasperation. The ride was so uncomfortable for Dean Priest that he really lamented the loss of Emily Kent's conversation for an hour and a half. "Hang relations and family duties! Her mother was never cruel to those who didn't speak like the others - look and act like the others. She had naught but love for those drew apart of their own will, and created worlds of their own" 

But his weird passionate tone struck a different interpretation for Starr. She thought he was criticizing her treatment of Burnley. He must have overheard her the other night with Emily Beatrice. She felt ashamed of himself - this was why he thought her stupid and heartless and unfit to speak to. She sat contritely and in perfect stillness as they approached the shore, but her thoughts whirled as busily as the wagon wheels.


	6. Shores of Romance

Starr was still in a state of indecision throughout supper, but she was acutely aware of a certain boy's closeness as they lined up around the bonfires. She dared not look up, but she could feel herself in his shadow. His energetic warmth radiated - washed over her. She kept her ears cocked for his peculiar, funny, robotic voice. He was always in line in front of or behind her. And when he off-handedly put a hot-dog on her plate, she said "Thank you" - the first acknowledgement she had given him all summer long since their last conversation.

She stole away by herself to explore the Malvern cliffs when the older boys and girls began their dance on the shore. Partly she wanted to avoid a certain thing she felt she was now bound to say, but could not bring herself to. Partly she knew that fate would decide for her.

She walked around in circles wondering how to say what she must say to Burnley Miller. "Burnley Miller, I'm so sorry - for being so hateful to you. Will you be my friend?" No, no, that was so commonplace, so undignified and unimaginative. "Burnley Miller, you have bestowed utmost kindness upon me. I have behaved abominably and deserve to be cast out of your good graces in all eternity." Would he understand such high-falutin language? What if he didn't 'get it'? "Burnley Miller, I'll be your friend -- if you want me to." But she didn't really want to be his friend, queer little Burnley. She just didn't want Mr. Priest to think she was so abjectly cruel and heartless.

"Can we be friends, Starr?" Burnley's eager voice asked.

She wasn't imagining now, he had really followed her into the Malvern cliffs, as she had half-hoped, half-guessed.

"Yes." she said curtly and ungraciously. "But why were you following me around?" she asked bluntly, although she didn't mean to be and didn't know how to soften it.

"I saw you, with your white dress and hair flying in the wind." Burnley fairly glowed. "Knights should always shadow their maidens faithfully!"

"Get away from me!" Starr screamed, running to the edge of the cliff.

"Whoa there, be careful, it's dangerous out there." Burnley said practically. There was genuine concern in his voice.

"Oh, I know where I'm walking. Who do you think you are to tell me what to do, Burnley Miller?"

"Only your humble servant, lady, but when I grow up I'm going to be a famous artist- as famous as your father.

"His paintings are amazing, aren't they? Mother has one at home - it's in our living room. Is there anything you want to do when you're grown-up, Starr?"

Oh, there was so much she longed to do once she was grown up and free! She daydreamed often of her ambitions, but they always paled behind the achievements of her famous mother and father.

"Do you want to be a writer like your mother, or an artist like your father?"

Here was Burnley asking the infuriating question again. Why did everybody suppose she had to follow her parents' footsteps?

"Neither." she flared. "I'm going to travel to Spain and Egypt and Africa - by myself." she added proudly.

"Woah. Can't I come with you?" Burnley asked in an injured tone. "I'll protect you." he added nicely.

"I don't want you to come near me!" Starr stepped back. She was on the precipice of the cliff - now she lost her foothold and the earth slid rapidly below her.

"Wait for me - I'll save you - Starr!" Burnley shouted. He ran to the side of the cliff and reached her hands, but finding that she was slipping too quickly, he jumped down beside her without thinking.

They found themselves marooned on a red boulder with no means of getting back up. The tide was coming in on the isolated shore, washing hungrily and drowning the smaller rocks. Very far off, they could see the gilmmer of the fires of the clam-bake.

"Are you okay?"

Starr nodded stiffly.

"Are you hurt?"

Starr shook her head.

"Are you worried?"

Starr gave a half-nod.

"Are you cold?"

Starr gave in and shivered. Burnley, glad that here was a concern he could do something about, took of his jacket and wrapped it around Starr. She was tiny, and the sight of his shuffling coat enveloping the tiny damsel pleased Burnley.

"I'll look for some suitable rocks. Maybe we can make a fire, like they did in the stone age. It will be a signal, for rescue." Burnley suggested.

But they were spared the trouble, for momentarily they heard footsteps rustling in the woods. "Help!" Starr shouted. "Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeelp!" Burnley yelled, cupping his hands to make long echoes.

Young Kelly - the bachelor son of tin-peddlar Kelly of yore - peered out at them from the top of the cliff. "New Moon folks!" he ejaculated, recognizing the tilt of Starr's chin. "Ne'er did I thought I would come upon the day when a' caught myself rescuin' a Murray!"

"Shut up and help us get up!" Burnley shouted furiously.

"She's your liddle sweetheart, ain't she?" He chuckled. He procured rope from goodness knows where and swung it down to them. "Help the lass up first there. Easy there. And now, you follow. That'sa boy" he instructed. Burnley lifted and tied a loop of rope around Starr's waist.

"She's a pretty one, isn't she?" Young Kelly nudged Burnley when they were finally back on the cliff. "Not pale and golden like some of them - but I like the fire in her eyes. Don't ye now, don't ye?" he poked Burnley in the ribs and to Starr's disgust, Burnley shoved him back amiably.

"I'm keeping my eye on her, don't you worry, Mr. Kelly."

"Well now - I guess it's romantic out on those rocks by yerselves, eh?" He leaned into Starr. Starr didn't like his smell - he reeked of tobacco. "You know, you owe him a kiss, for saving your life. It's the right and proper thing to do." he whispered loudly in her ear.

Starr thought he meant himself, and shuddered at the thought of kissing gold-teethed, bewhiskered Young Kelly. "I save my kisses for a chosen few." she said with dignity.

"A Murray, a Murray to bone." he winked at Burnley. 

But Burnley was quicker. He put his arms around Starr and planted a kiss on her cheek!

"Don't you dare!" Starr pushed Burnley away and ran as fast as she could back to the shore.

When they came within sight of their family and friends again, Father looked askance at them. Starr realized she was still wearing Burnley's coat.

"Take it back! I hate you and I want nothing to do with you ever again!" She thrust the coat at Burnley.

Starr thought she would be punished severely for her rudeness, but Father only exchanged an amused smile with Aunt Ilse, who was wrapped very charmingly in a paper-thin dress of gold and silver cherry print. "What a regular little spitfire, and what a beauty!" Aunt Ilse exclaimed impulsively.


	7. A Cat of Another Colour

"Relations are the hardest bondage of all." Starr quoted despairingly. The words came from one of her mother's books and was made poignant to her in a conversation overheard between her mother and Mr. Priest. 

"How is it that I am so free and so enslaved on the Island, at once?" Mother had asked blithely. "I roam by moonlight through the deeps of the Blair Water and I can call my soul my own as I never can in metropolitan Montreal. New Moon beauty fans some primeval fire in my soul. And then I stumble across a kinsmen - to wit, Andrew Murray's brood, and loveliness turns into ludicrity. I cannot walk by my wild lone and wave my wild tail anymore. Years of clan tradition weigh down upon me."

"We can never escape our ancestors." Mr. Priest remarked uncannily. Emily thought that he sounded a bit like dear, dead Cousin Jimmy. Dean the worldly, wealthy, cultured and "simple" farmer Jimmy Murray uttered the same breaths of insight. Was that all we all amounted to in the end of our days - darkness, curt half-wittedness, with only sporadic flashes of enlightenment like the sun vanishing behind thickening clouds?

"Oh, our ancestors are alright- they're dead and buried and can't harrass anyone." Aunt Ilse chirped in flippantly. Starr, hidden by the tall-backed armchair, nearly gave herself away giggling at the vision of bonneted great-great grandmother Mary Shipley of here-i-stay fame, trotting about waving her soup ladle at her children and neighbours. "It's the Andrew Murrays we want escaping from. I'm golly glad we're in Montreal most of the year, now that New Moon is overrun by his spawn."

"Ilse!" Emily reproached, nearly choking on her laughter.

"You know it, Emily." Ilse's eyes danced. "Tell me she isn't coming to spoil your summer."

"She is. I had no plausible grounds to refuse."

"Oh, Emily." Aunt Ilse squeezed Mother's cheeks. "God put too big a pinch of Murray in you."

So Adela Murray was installed as a guest of the Disappointed House. This important personage was the daughter of Cousin Andrew Murray, and matched Starr in her twelve years of age. Her abode was New Moon farm - so near there was really no need to stay all night with the Kents', except that great-Aunt Laura Murray had the notion that Starr was lonesome without her older sister about, and posited the visit. Starr also had the impression that the Murrays thought she was not altogether on par with Murray standards - and so was inviegling "model" child Adela Murray into Starr's daily routine. Nobody had put it just so to Starr, but you did not have to tell Starr these things.

Polite, insipid Adela with brown hair and even, symmetrical features. She was not really pretty but her family raved over how photogenic she was - really because she smiled rosily whenever anyone spoke to her. Starr, who scowled all the more to balance out Adela's ready smiles, was dubbed "sullen."

Adela was hard to amuse. She did not like to hike through the yesterday roads and lofty john's bush. She thought sitting in the family graveyard at dusk "creepy." She liked Starr's garden and especially the southwest bower of tea-roses, but she wanted to cut and arrange the blossoms - which angered Starr, who never really liked to shorten the lives of living things.

Starr despised Adela. But she did not hate Adela - Starr always made marked distinctions in her relationships. For one, you were duty-bound to love your family. For another, Adela was so dull she was not really worth hating.

Unlike he-who-she-would-not-name.

She had foresworn the imp of Burnley Miller but he persisted in hanging around. Aunt Ilse brought him on her frequent sprees at the Disappointed House, and of course Starr had to entertain both Burnley and Adela. She was as haughty as could be to Burnley, and freezingly polite to Adela. But Burnley was very nice to Adela - who was secretly laughing at his odd mannerisms up her sleeve! Starr was as furious with Burnley as with Adela for making himself such a laughing stock. Why couldn't he tell that Adela was not his friend? But for that matter, neither was she.

"Your boyfriend is very funny." Adela condescended to Starr after the Millers left.

"I haven't the slightest idea who or what you mean." Starr said with great dignity.

"He's very sweet on you. Anyone can see that. But you're wise to steer clear of it - after all, he could be your brother." she added with a significant look.

"What do you mean?" 

"Oh, if you don't know. I don't know if I should tell you." Adela was maddeningly delicate.

"Adela Murray" Starr felt her brows draw together - the legendary "Murray look" was on her face. "explain yourself, this instant."

"Oh, it's not much really, all Blair Water knows. Does your father write your mother often?"

"Once a fortnight." Starr said promptly and proudly. But she was not to be side-tracked. "What does this have to do with Burnley, or me?" she demanded.

"Oh, not really Burnley at all... but his mother. She gets letters from your father."

"Why shouldn't she?" Starr asked. The moment she said it she knew she had made a mistake. "Her daughter, Emily Beatrice, is in Europe under my father's care." she clarified.

"Oh, it was awfully sweet of your father to take along her daughter - though everybody is surprised he didn't take you instead when your'e his own child! Goodness, Starr Kent, stop looking at me like that. Everyone knows your father and Mrs. Miller were engaged to be married once. They had planned the grandest wedding ever on PEI. She was a flirt and jilted your father at the altar. Judge Miller is too besotted with her to notice - she's awfully pretty isn't she? All our great-aunts want to tell your mother not to put up with such carrying on's, but Aunt Emily is too proud and temperamental - plus maybe she wants it all for novel-writing material, goodness knows. Don't look at me like that- Mrs. Miller is really pretty, I don't blame your father one bit. And they say that Mrs. Miller's mother was the most scandalous woman on this side of the Atlantic."

Starr felt sick to her stomach. She cast tradition to winds. 

"I hate you. Don't you talk like this about my parents, under their roof! My hatred for Burnley Miller is nothing compared to my burning loathe of your bodily presence, your foul mouth, your polluted mind!" she spewed and slapped the astonished Adela soundly across her rosy cheeks!


	8. Anguish

Reader dear, I will not let you think that Starr escaped her crimes without penance Do not forget that her mother was a half-Murray, whatever her private opinions of her relations may be. Emily Kent had very clear notions of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. And though Burnley might never have tattled on Starr in all her fits of fury, Adela was a cat of a different colour.

"The Murrays never use such language." she told Starr with the freezing dignity peculiar to the tribe.

Starr's punishment was to be "sent to coventry." No one would speak to her or play with her, and she would eat her meals alone. That night, Starr took her plate of boiled greens and pork rather dismally to the kitchen and was determined not to be lonely. She tried to absorb her attention in the garden view. But the clatter in dining room drew her gaze. Mother and Mr. Priest and Adela were positively gabbing and she longed to join in. At least, Mother and Mr. Priest were holding fascinating conversation. They had that ability to keep a conversation in the air, bouncing it back and forth like a ball gaining momentum. Adela was smiling politely and adding to the grace of the picture. Her beautiful hands touched the shallow willow-ware plates lightly, her silhouette was blotted against dark balsamic air of the pine woods framed by the french window. Starr could see how Mother and Mr. Priest admired the portrait of graceful Adela. They were smiling to one another with their eyes.

It was bitterest to Starr that she was punished for defending her Mother and Father. She could not talk about it - she could not tell her mother what Adela knew. If she knew, would Adela be sitting in her place at the cobweb-belaced table, thrilling to the soft August wind in her hair?

It was Starr's habit to paint melodramatic daydreams to combat her loneliness. When she was very young, great-Aunt Elizabeth Murray had gripped her tiny, terrified her chin in a pair of stern, knotted hands and proclaimed: "All Starr. She will never be able to distinguish fact from fiction."

And so Starr succumbed to unreigned and vivid visions:

"Starr." so would the syllable come like a sweet morsel in the scented night, wafting on the liquid air, barely audible. Her name sounding like a caress in that whisper, but so adroitly would she spurn on that ridiculous, frog-voice that caused it.

Burnley crouching in the foliage, of course, catching her by surprise as he always did! Didn't that constant devotion stir the strings of her wayward feminine heart? Not her! She would turn and fix her stare icily to the wall.

But first with a long, steady gaze. Where had she read that looking was more effective to speaking? Surely in that gaze she would squelch her eager suitor, crush his heart to dust beneath her feet. It would be thrilling to exercise such power.

"I was here all along, Starr - I couldn't bear to leave you. Don't ask me to now." (Was that romantic enough?)

"Talk to me, Starr. Please." But she would deign no reply to his plead. She would 'continue cutting bread and butter' while her frenzied lover lingered at her window, relentlessly enduring her punishment of silence.

"I like you ever so much better than Adela, Starr. I'll go punch her head for you." (Ahhhh, that would be comforting to hear. But the scenario was still imperfect)

In the end Starr pictured Burnley pushing the insufferable Adela into a sinking swamp, in which, after being mud-besplattered in face and hair, she was never to be heard of again. Then severe judgement would fall on the wretched Burnley from every Murray - pompous "Uncle" Andrew taking the lead by locking him in a dark, damp dungeon inhabited by poisonous snakes. In which inhumane conditions he would die of starvation, but she - for whom he had suffered and strived - would she relent at last to visit him at his deathbed? No - it was more romantic that she lived a life of remorse.

"And I may live eighty years." she mourned aloud tragically.

----

Starr's imaginings grew wildly abandon during her confinement in coventry. The most intolerable moments were at night, when Adela tossed on the pillow, where her slippery brown hair mingled with Starr's soft, dark masses. For when they were alone Adela would say the most biting things, and Starr could not utter a word of retaliation. Starr was not one to break her oath of silence. She was determined to take her punishment like a martyr.

"You are so bitter and hermetic." Adela chaffed when Starr, ostensibly ignoring her,  
"Aunt Emily cares deeply for that queer old Jarback Priest!" She waited to see Starr's eyes beseeching her for more information - then shut her milk-white eye-lids and primrose mouth on the conversation.

Starr had a white night, watching replayed on the screen of the dark night: Mother clasping Mr. Priest's hand in mid-conversation. With what intensity Mother gazed at him! When had she seen passion like that a-flame in Mother's eyes? Mr. Priest jealous preference for Mother and Mother alone. Mother's protectiveness of him, the weird catch in her voice and attitude whenever his name arose before Father. What had mother said in their drive to the Disappointed House? She felt Mother pressing her close, compelling her not to hurt Mr. Priest. 

And she had.

She could not explain it, but she felt implicitly that their fates were intertwined.

"I wonder if there isn't something in heredity." Adela commented airily another evening. "I've heard Burnley's a great artist." There was derogation in her voice, both at the profession of being an artist and froggy-faced Burnley's ridiculous aspiration.

For if Burnley was - it was too terrible to think of. For if father could - what of mother - what of herself? She could not be related to Burnley, with whom she had nothing in common. The thought made her writhe, made goosebumps run coldly on her flesh. Starr searched feverishly for a solution. And the one that presented itself to her was equally torturous.

What if Mr. Priest was her father? Mother the ethereal and alluring, Mr. Priest the melancholy cynic. Hating her bitterly beneath his crooked brows. If he hated her so, how could she be his? Perhaps he had not wanted her. She was the evidence of their secret love. He resented her presence... nay, he hated her existence. She should never have been born.

It must be true. Even her name, Starr, was an allusion to his pet name for mother. Everyone had known it all along, but her. No wonder Blair Water shunned the Kents - if she was really a Kent!

"What would you do if your parents aren't ... really your parents?" Adela taunted.   



	9. The Girl Who Would Not Speak

Starr did a cruel thing when her punishment was up. Mother shortened her time in coventry at Aunt Ilse's railing - which Starr intercepted, had been connived by that meddlesome Burnley. That very fact rankled and made her more reluctant to comply. So instead of bringing her fanciful chatter of spices and the secrets of the roses to mother in the little parlour as she used to, or of speaking aloud to the many gray cats that kept tryst with them in the garden, Starr continued in her sullenness.

"You may speak to us, now, Starr, please do." Aunt Ilse entreated.

"I'm afraid Starr has never been much of a conversationalist." Mr. Priest said drily.

Mother had written once about a woman who had quarrelled with her family and was ordered "never to speak to them again." She never did, out of spite. Starr gave them a defiant look, which Emily knew meant: I am only following your fictional precedent. Heaven forgive her for having such a clever child!

On the evening Adela had gone, Burnley had sidled up to her.

"Say, Starr." Burnley's eager voice seemed to ooze with arrogance to Starr. "You'll see, you'll be out of trouble soon. Just trust it all to me."

"You know," Burnley continued zealously. "Emily's been writing Mums the most fascinating accounts of Paris. The colours of the foliage, the joy on the faces of strangers. We'll go there one day, Starr, won't we?"

"She talked about all the great art they saw - Manet, Monet, classical greek sculptures in the Louvre Palace, and that great modern genius - Picasso. They dined with him. Starr, will you ask your father if he can bring me along one day? It would be real nice to talk to a great man." He concluded pompously.

Burnley's candour rang very insultingly to Starr. As if her father was not a great man, mere potatoes beside the famous Picasso! A mere stepping stone to the reaches of a celebrity! And the nerve of Burnley to aspire to be her father's protegee. Or was he his father? He must inexplicably be her father, not his. Starr clung fiercely to the thought. The presumption of that callow young boy to curry favour with her at her father!

A sharp pain speared through Starr. Even though Adela had gone she had left a trail of insinuations behind her, that curled up like snakes and writhed through her mind at every hour. 

She cast Burnley her practiced, disdainful look and deigned no reply. Eventually - though his prattle seemed never to cease - he picked up his bottom and went his own way.

And suddenly Starr realized something. She had always hated society, and people, for what they might think of her. Smug Adela was the very entrails of the beast, with her mean way of judging Starr and her ugly, hurtful tidings. Why must social contact be so painful? How she struggled to find something to say to Adela, who had a way of turning everything Starr said into something malignant. How inadequate she felt in the presence of Mr. Priest or Aunt Ilse - how she would like to speak to them but could not, and how stupid it made her feel! It was irksome that every word she uttered to Burnley, kind or otherwise, was bait - it would only encourage him to talk to her, and she dreaded the implications. Adela would pounce on his 'crush' on her, and vice versa. 

And now she had lit on a way of getting back at them! It was all their fault, really.

She laughed a little derisively under her breath.

"Silence is so effective!"

---  
Aside from Burnley, there were only three people who featured in Starr's daily life that summer.

The first was Aunt Ilse, whom Starr resented both for her putting her foot in and her being merely Burnley's mother. She was just as carefree as her son, and her golden beauty shone too often in the dim halls of the Disappointed House. Could there be anything in that yarn of Adela's about her and father? She looked at Starr with eyes that were merry with affection and often tossed careless comments her way which made Starr feel... dull. She didn't have many clever things to say, and seeing how quietly mother responded to Aunt Ilse's rages - albeit with a little smile playing on her lips - Starr raged for her mother. Why didn't mother fight back at this woman who... could have deceived her? So whenver Starr encountered Aunt Ilse Starr she bore her through with a hard, hateful stare, and then walked deliberately in the other way. It was very rude, of course, but how could you reprimand a girl who would not speak?

Mr. Priest, Starr avoided at all costs. Ever since their drive to Malvern, contact with him was doubly painful. Like a bad wound on her skin, Starr hoped that by leaving it alone it would somehow heal and be as smooth as it once was - ergo, that her dreams would heal and weave together again.

The greatest ordeals were the evenings when no one visited. Mother and Starr were accustomed to spending these fragrant twilights working in the garden. In the past they had sang old-fashioned love songs, or woven fantasies together, but of late Starr had been wary of doing so lest her spoken dreams betrayed her. Mother simply could not find out about her feelings for Mr. Priest.

Especially not if Mother loved Mr. Priest, and her loved her in return.

Starr weeded ferociously near Mother's annuals. Partly the work occupied her so that she did not have to talk. Partly she wondered if her energetic anger would seep into the soil, poison the blooms, exhaust their lives. Starr was so morose that she felt savagely destructive.

Mother, on the other hand, took frequent breaks, lingering to bathe in the dusk. Often her eyes flicked over to Starr's to share the thrill of a robin-song or a magical moonrise. Starr worked very hard to evade her gaze. Who knew but that she would soften - or betray herself - in the moonlight? Moonlight was dangerous.

Only once did Starr catch mother's eyes accidentally. Mother had gathered a lovely sheaf of golden mum's from some of their flower bushes. They lay in a heap by her feet, and the scent drew Starr's breath, and her inevitable gaze. Her dark eyes fell inadvertently on mother's pellucid violet.

"Oh, Starr, what has come over you - has come between us?" Mother's implored passionately. But in a moment the Murray cold froze her aquiline features. Her head, with its milky darkness against the flaming sun, made her resemble some far, remote goddess. She carried disdain in her expression that equaled Starr's - a challenge, as if to say - if you will not speak to me, neither will I speak to you.  



	10. A Book of Revelation

Better than the garden of the Disappointed House with its alluring, reasonless gate, better than the bracken dells of the Yesterday Road or the red deeps of the Blair Water, Starr loved the Tansy Patch. The house, which her father and unknown grandmother had lived in, had been sold and hauled away long ago. The property was abandoned. All that remained of it was a ramshackle barn on a scrap of hill that ran wild with the yellow blossom. Its fragrance in the summer dusks filled the place with otherworldly magic.

But it was the quaint, low-eaved barn that was Starr's secret sanctuary. She had many secret abodes but whenever life got too hard she stole away to lurk in the shadows of the Tansy Patch barn. The musky smell of sunken wood, the wild weeds settling into the cracks or the fragility of gossamer cobwebs seemed akin to herself. Lank, forgotten, striving to freely inhabit an unwanted place.

It was the Tansy Patch which Starr sought in her crushing self-isolation. She had worked herself into a corner. Having begotten her own torture she could but keep up the act.

But she had grown so used to imagining a lovelorn Burnley on her trail, she alighted the barn door with trepid uneasiness.

It was empty, after all. There was no one lurking in the shadow, not even thin gray cats of Starr's great affection. Starr stood alert for Burnley to emerge, scanned all nooks and crannies, but he was not spying on her; the echoing salon was vacant.

Or was it? The place wore an air of difference, as if it had known another life since it saw her last.

In a corner were pinned a set of watercolour sketches, of landscapes and facial expressions familiar to her.

The fairy silver moonrise over Blair Water, gossamer frost on the branches of the Tomorrow Road. Fields of tnasy, blue lakes gemmed on a landscape of surprising red cliffs. Two girls roaming sweetly hand in hand - the goldhaired as Ilse Juliet and the dark as Emily Beatrice; a woman writing by a window, with the light of inspiration flashing across her eyes - her Mother, a laughing lady, reckless and care abandon - Aunt Ilse. Why, there was even one of Adela Murray - prim pursed lips, scornful, strutting posture - how cleverly he had caricatured her! All at once she did not seem hateful, but merely comical in her exaggerated self-pride and self-importance.

An old man with a crease-lined face, something of a seer in his eyes, and yet a bitter cynicism curling around the corners of his mouth - it was Mr. Priest. In that portrait she saw him not as she had always seen him, gasping with the tightness of emotions in her chest. Something about the portrait conveyed his character to her with a perceptiveness she never touched. A clever man who had lost too much to his selfishness and desire to control others. A self-deprecation in his lameness and appearance that spawned a twisted jealousy of those who seemed normal. A sensitive fear of being criticized, which made him fragile.

"Works of a genius!" She exclaimed.

Starr gasped as she leafed through the next sketches. They depicted a little girl in the gloaming shadows of the woods. She was slim, but her slimness did not make her insignificant - instead, she appeared dainty and sweet and clever. Her book had fallen into her lap and her expression was of one lapsing into a daydream. Her gesture was brooding and thoughtful. Her furtive shyness was recognizable in the blush on her cheeks, but she had never guessed how its crimson rendered the white complexion beautiful. She saw herself as she never had before... charming, happy, with an air of mystery and intrigue. She wanted to get acquainted with the girl in the picture - herself, whom someone thought was a worthwhile subject!

Her heart was so full at the sight of that last drawing, that she did not hear the door creak. When she turned, A shaft of light fell from him to her. She looked at him - she had had a glimpse into his soul and it was like drawing water from a well after a deep drought. It was the mirror of her own soul. The author of her thoughts of the last half-hour, and he had shown her unto a new vantage point. She felt she could no longer thwart their kindredness any longer; in him was that vivid faculty for imagination that she so seldom recognized in anyone else.

It was as fantastic as any of her imaginings, but this -this moment of light and shadow- was real.

"Starr." The word escaped his mouth like a prayer.

But he saw that she had read his inmost thoughts, as he had always known hers. The balance between them almost hung even.

She would have spoken, but stubbornness clogged her tongue.

It is strange how our fates can reverse in a moment. Perhaps her icy silence had finally penetrated his thick hide. Perhaps he was particularly vulnerable in that moment, knowing that she had seen and understood the workings of his heart. He picked up his sketches.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know you came here, too." he said almost deferentially. The door behind him, leaving Starr in the chill draft of the barn.

She walked out and lifted her face to the cobalt night.

"Ah, one can breathe here!" she cried under her breath. Even yet she dared not speak loudly. 


	11. The End of Summer

Starr's summer waned away. The elfin saplings in the Tomorrow Road were now slender maidens in garments of golden-red. The fields beyond the Blair Water were aflame with the burnish of harvest. Where daisies had been sprinkled like stardust in June, now bloomed the asters in September's haze. The locusts buzzed more loudly, and everywhere birds crowed - squawked - fluttered, in frenzied practice for their annual migration. 

So would the Millers, the Kents, and Mr. Priest disperse from their beloved island.

The latter was like the dust on the road. All summer he had been fading - his features ashen, his patience short, the cynical spark in his eyes reduced to the faintest glimmer. He still made appearances in that ghostly hour of dusk, each time looking more like he was part of the gray shadows or the withering leaves.

One evening Mr. Priest failed to come. The next day, his sister's housekeeper 'phoned up that he had a cold. In a week they learned it was not a cold - it was pneumonia. The young Blair Water doctor assured them there was no cause for alarm, but Dr. Burnley came for dinner one night and averred that "at Dean Priest's age, ... and considering the lifestyle he's lead, he may not last through the dawn."

Starr gave him a mute gaze and her features went blank. She felt that she should be looking shocked -stricken. But she only felt indifferent. Was this heartache? Or was her heart made of stone?

She stole away after supper as was her habit. There was no cause to linger at the table, especially now that she did not speak. She paced about the garden paths, by the gate which he had haunted and loved. Where was he now - how was it that he would never haunt it again? And where was the girl who had lingered there, in the torment of hope, in the beginning of spring? She was not that girl.

But she was determined to pursue her passion to its end. So as the darkness fell she stole away through the familiar paths, cross-lots to the Elena Priest's homestead, hoping no-one would notice her absence.

In that half-hour she relived all her girlhood.

Ever since she could remember, there was that bitter despair that he loved her mother - beautiful, talented, brilliant - that she could never amount to anything in her mother's shadow. In vain she struggled to write poetry. In vain she had read them aloud in the gloaming hours by the gate. Oh! She had never tried to fish for compliments, she had never lead him to believe they were her own. She was not so presumptuous. No- she pretended she was reading aloud from a novel, or a song-book. But nary a comment did Mr. Priest deign. Starr concluded she could never be a writer and writhed many hours in humiliation.

She recalled when she had thought of wearing one of Ilse Juliets pretty dresses to trick him into believing she was grown-up. A girl in one of mother's stories had done so, losing her tongue-tiedness in the guise of her sister's glamour. She had smuggled into Ilse Juliet's closet and fingered the many silken garments. Here was one of daisy-besprinkled blue - here a red corduroy embroidered with silvery vines - here an enchanting muslim with spiralling egyptian print. She donned the wrap - and the reflection in the gilt-framed glass with its green coppery tint - was something she would never forget. She looked willowy and intriguing - she smiled at the-stranger-in-the-glass, and the smile was alluring. The creamy muslim and the dark pattern brought out the shadowy tints in her hair - gave ground to the dark pools in her eyes. She even dared dab the golden hoops Emily Beatrice had left on the dressing table, on her little pink shells of ears. The portrait in the oval frame was perfect. But not her - not herself! She shuddered and tore it all off and fled to the garret, as if she had already been found out ignominously. She could never pretend to be her willowy, golden sister.

She had wished sometimes that she could be like Ilse Juliet - with the witty, outspoken ally of an Emily Beatrice always by her side. Ilse Juliet never had to face Mr. Priest alone. Not that she would have minded; she was so lovely to look at that people forgave her for being shy. But then she reminded herself how Mr. Priest loved mother, and "had no use" for Mrs. Miller, so she consoled herself that he preferred the dark ladies over the fair ones.

All her life she had been consoling herself in this fashion - whenever any situation was intolerable, she imagined his cynical smile at her tormentors, his meed of praise at her ability to bear it! It was so real. She loved his brand of sarcasm, she loved the scenarios where she vanquished victoriously with his dark looks as her armour.

And now he was to go out of her world. Could he- really be going - without any word of acknowledgement for her?

She alighted the steps of the Priest home, and shrank before the doorbell. She didn't dare ring it. What would Miss Elena Priest think of her, a little unrelated damsel here at this hour of the night? No - she did not have the courage to do it. It was like the day she had tried to try on the dress. She would be found out, and laughed at.

But it had been grey all her journey, and now it began to pour. Before she crossed the driveway the August rain was pelting down, apropos of a thunderstorm.

She was caught like a cat in a tree.

Gingerly she stole around the house, staying close below the eaves, spying into the bay windows. Elena and her maid were washing the dishes in the kitchen, with her back turned. She crept under their window, close to the bushes, making sure not to be seen. But she cut her knee against a rosebush thorn.

Starr crept on - she couldn't linger. Finally - here was his room - he had insisted on spreading the window wide open, much to the shock of his niece. "Night air at a deathbed!" she had said direly to her maid. The maid nodded solemnly, sharing Elena Priest's horror.

Starr had never seen a deathbed before. Mr. Priest lay there in the black bed with the carved posts, that he had ordered to be brought home from one of his Arabian voyages. There was a vase on the table full of some white flowers that glimmered spectrally through the dusk. Starr wished she had thought of bringing him an armful of flowers. She imagined herself heaping on him all the wood lilies from the garden of the Disappointed House, that she had heard him praise, and had always thought of as a symbol of her love for him.

On the wall above the flowers hung a miniature of girl who looked familiar. It was a photo taken of Mother when she was seventeen - with her hair twisted in a funny old candogan braid, and a full skirt of a silky-gray tint, gazing at a red rose. It must be what her mother had called her "ashes-of-roses" evening gown. Starr writhed at the portrait - it was so intimate and possessive as if it slyly flaunted its complete ownership of Mr. Priest. But something in her laughed at herself for her ridiculous folly.

He was lying in the old-fashioned, canopy-top bed which had been his deceased brother-in-law's. His face on the pillow was a face of yellow wax. His eye - his mocking green eyes, which had been, so they said, an inheritance from his Irish mother, were hidden under wrinkled lids. His long-fingered, crooked, rather evil hands were lying on the spread. . The deep dimple was in his chin that Starr had always wanted to put her finger teasingly into. His majestic white hair swept back from his brow. He was barely coherent man but he did not seem infantile even as he lay there, sick and dying. And, thought Starr with a shudder, he still gave you the uncanny feeling that he knew too much about you.

She was trembling in the wet and cold, and her knees were bleeding. She was furious with herself. Soon Elena would come in to tend him, and the night was dark behind her.

She scrambled quickly into the window and made herself kneel by his bed, as if she were a wraith in a penitent ritual.

"Mr. Priest." she said aloud, though barely above a whisper. "Mr. Priest. I love you! I have loved you all my life." she found herself believing each word less as she said it, but now that she had begun the words bubbled forth as if she was possessed. "Ever since I could remember, I knew - we were the only ones who could understand each other. Mother - mother - she stood in our way. Oh, Mr. Priest, tell me that - "

She picked up the hand and there was a terrible coldness to it. Suddenly, the dim room felt horribly still. She felt alone.

Starr could not remember how she got away. She ran pass the homelights and to the Tansy Patch barn where she knew she would find him. She had not gone there since she had discovered his drawings, but she knew all the same that he trysted there, and it had always comforted her that she knew where he was.

"I - don't love him. I killed him. And he could be my father!" she implored as she grasped Burnley's hands - or he, hers.

Burnley looked at her - her sopping hair, her feet of mud and blood, her wild, terrifed face. "Mr. Priest?" he asked, in his matter-of-fact voice, but in his eyes Starr saw kindness - protectiveness - perfect understanding. He proceeded to wipe her bleeding knees with his bare arms, having nothing else to help with.

"You loved him?" he went on, with a sort of tender choking voice.

"I thought I did, but now he's dead."

"Do you mean - he had really passed away? If that's true - we'd better tell our mum's."

He took Starr to the Disappointed House, she clinging to him all the way. Aunt Emily and his mother sat in the living room, where driftwood flames reflected weirdly in the glow of the gazing ball. "Starr says Mr. Priest is dead," he told them, because Starr was incapable of speaking for herself.

The two grown-ups said little but did much, phoning for news and bandaging and warming Starr up. All the while, Starr held Burnley's hand tightly.

---

Starr was sick with pneumonia for two weeks. She was delirious but she remembered none of it. When she woke up, it was in an entirely different world.

Her father and sister had come home. Burnley told her how Ilse Juliet and Emily Beatrice had held hands in terror on the living room couch, the night Dr. Burnley and the young doctor both agreed she should be moved to the hospital. Only Aunt Emily averred nothing could be better than the Blair Water air - "'externals have always been my salvation,' I heard her tell Uncle Teddy. There was one winter when she was bedridden for months, she says, and the doctors gave up on her, but Nature made her recover."

The girls crowded her room with the late roses from the garden, but Burnley brought her wildflowers. The asters of the golden deeps - the tansy that she missed so dearly. He even set up branches of crimson leaves in a little black jug by her bedside. That token of autumn pleased Starr the most. She loved the changing of the seasons, and hated the thought of being in bed and missing that magic moment of transformation.

Burnley spent as many hours by Starr as his mother would allow. He told her all the news from their favourite woodland haunts, and relayed to her all the family gossip. But there was one piece of news she was not allowed to hear until she got well, so Burnley kept his counsel vigilantly. He was overjoyed that she wanted to talk to him - what did it matter if they couldn't talk about, what he wanted to talk about most? They had a lifetime ahead of them - thank God he gave her life!

One evening Aunt Emily said to Starr, "there is something we need to talk about when we wake up tomorrow." Her face was sorrowful, almost afraid of her baby daughter. Burnley, with his uncanny ability for reading others' hearts, knew what she meant.

And he told her himself that very evening.

"Mr. Priest is dead, Starr. Did you know that? He died while - before you became ill." He watched her intently, afraid of what her reaction would be, and gripping her hand very firmly and tenderly.

"No-o - I mean, yes." Starr said, confusedly and bravely. "I remember it now - I thought it was a bad dream. I saw him dead."

"Yes, you did." Burnley reminisced. "You had gone to look for him - because you were in love with him?"

"Yes - I - ever since I was a little girl, I had imagined myself in love with him."

"Ever since I saw you this summer I've loved you, Starr. Tell me it was only imagination."

Starr blushed sweetly. "Oh - maybe - but Burnley, what was worst was that Adela told me he was my father. And she told me - but I can't tell you this, nevermind."

"Oh, yes, you can. You can tell me anything."

"It's too cruel."

"Adela's an idiot. Don't believe her. She said that Mr. Priest is your father, but he isn't, you look like your father's mother - there's a portrait of her I found in the Tansy barn. Is that why you've been acting strange to your mother, Starr?"

"And to you, because she said you might be my - my father's son."

"Is that all? What nonsense, what a malicious thing she is. My silly, silly girl, you're 'another, not a sister' to me." he said endearingly and nestled his head on her little neck.

Abruptly he got up. "My girl - won't you ask your mother all about it? She's been worried sick about you. And I was afraid you would be upset you had missed his funeral."

"Oh, I'm glad I couldn't go, Burnley. I couldn't bear it."

"Bear what?" Emily asked with her habitual detached concern, as she stepped into the doorway. Burnley squeezed Starr's hand warmly. "Promise. Promise, you must tell her everything." He went out and left mother and daughter alone to their ghosts.

It was not easy for Starr, cool and aloof herself, to speak to her reserved mother. Haltingly she told her mother the whole story from the beginning, in broken words, omitting many of her confused feelings. But the story was still intact. Emily listened patiently and understood more than Starr could put into words.

"I have never loved Mr. Priest that way." Emily answered. "Though I promised to marry him once - it was out of pity, and I couldn't do it in the end because I belonged to your father. Mr. Priest and I furnished this house together in our engagement, but your father and I furnished it long ago in imagination as children. I saved his life here - though I never like to think of that - time."

"Just like how Burnley has saved my life." Starr thought.

"It was a horrible thing to see Mr. Priest, his dead face." Starr said. "I think it will always seem like a nightmare to me."

"I - know." Emily agreed. "My earliest memory was of my mother's funeral. I remember it distinctly. Mother was lying just before me in a long, black box. Father was crying--and I couldn't think why--and I wondered why Mother looked so white and wouldn't open her eyes. And I leaned down and touched her cheek--and oh, it was so cold. It made me shiver. And somebody in the room said, 'Poor little thing!' and I was frightened and put my face down on father's shoulder."

"That is why - I wish I had never seen it, mother! I may have gone on loving him forever, remembering him as -"

"I know - without the kiss of death on his brow."

"Mother - you understand, you understand so well. I'm sorry I was jealous of you."

"I'm glad, too - I wouldn't liked to have you hate me, my child, and there were times this summer when I thought that you did."

"No, mother - I was so unjust - I see that now." Starr swallowed hard.

"I should have understood better." Emily said regretfully.

"But we aren't easy people to understand, you and I." Starr said confidentially. "That's partly why I admire you and want to be like you, so much."

Emily laughed, pleased. "Starr, my little child - you will be great one day, in your own way, whether you become a novelist or otherwise. As my father said of me, so I shall say of you 'She will love deeply--she will suffer terribly--she will have glorious moments to compensate--as I have had.' May God bless you and keep you, my little Starr."

She held her in her arms until she fell asleep.

THE END.

passages lifted from "Retribution" in The Road to Yesterday by L. M. Montgomery


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